Historian Jon Kofas writes: "I must confess that I could
not disagree more with Christopher Jones, though I do enjoy reading his candid
views on various matters, including the extraordinary apologia of Hitler and
Mussolini, two of the most notorious dictators of the 20th century who along
with imperial Japan were responsible for the Second World War which claimed
the lives of an estimated 60 million people. I doubt that any historian familiar
with the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany does not recognize that Hitler was
the product of Germanic culture and his Social Darwinian times. His foreign
policy and strategy was in many respects a copy of that of Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg,
as the great German historian Fritz Fischer argued a generation ago. And of
course the Treaty of Versailles was the first long-term cause of WWII and it
contributed to the alienation of the German middle class that voted for Hitler
amid the universal despair of the Great Depression. If Lenin's Revolution had
never taken place, would Hitler have been possible? If Clemenceau and Wilson
never existed, would Hitler have been possible? No one knows, but that is hardly
a justification for defending Nazi Germany, no matter what one thinks of the
Weimar Republic's decadence, which was not very different than today's U.S.,
or any other western society. As far as Mussolini, Christopher Jones is right
that IL Duce was less harmful than Hitler, but let us not forget that his military
forces invaded Ethiopia and killed innocent villagers using mustard gas. Albania
and Greece were also invaded because Il Duce's mania knew no boundaries, and
the West was more concerned about the USSR than the immediate Nazi-Fascist threat
to Europe. Contrary to Christopher Jones statements, neither Hitler nor Mussolini
achieved much for their people except destruction and chaos for their respective
countries and the rest of Europe. If the contention if that Hilter and Mussolini
were not that different than other butchers in history, like Napoleon, I would
have to agree with some qualifications, most notably the anti-Semitism of the
Nazis. If the argument is that they were good patriots and tried to defend the
fatherland from domestic and foreign threats, then I must ask Mr. Jones to
send to WAIS the pro-Nazi and pro-Fascist bibliography that disproves what has
been written thus far by mainstream scholars".

Paul Preston, the well-known specialist on modern Spain,
says:"Jon Kofas wrote 'As far as Mussolini, Christopher Jones is right
that IL Duce was less harmful than Hitler, but let us not forget that his military
forces invaded Ethiopia and killed innocent villagers using mustard gas. Albania
and Greece were also invaded because Il Duce's mania knew no boundaries, and
the West was more concerned about the USSR than the immediate Nazi-Fascist threat
to Europe.' I agree entirely but it would strengthen Jon's case even more if
he added the Italian intervention in Spain, which was on such a scale as to
be tantamount to outright, and unprovoked, war against the Spanish Republic".

John Wonder says: "Mirabile dictu! I agree entirely with Christopher Jones's
analysis of the situation in Europe following WWI. The only thing he left out
was the enormous stupidity of the Versailles treaty makers (or avengers) in
dismembering the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We are still paying today for that
egregious mistake", Christopher Jones now comments: "Curiously, I
really don't disagree all that very much with Jon Kofas' reply, only to say
that it wasn't meant as an apologia -- it was a simple statement of "uncomfortable"facts.
Obviously the end was cataclysmic and in retrospect, any possible democratic
or monarchical alternative to the Nazi regime would have been preferable. But
that is precisely where the guilt of Wilson, Clémenceau is so obvious.
I have to return to Erik von Kuehnnelt Leddin again who said that if Hitler
had had a shred of humor, he would have erected a monument to Wilson; in fact
he owed his success to the American president's demolition of the old European
monarchical concert and the break up of the Austrian Empire that could have
been a prototype for the Unites States of Europe.

Could Hitler have happened if the Hohenzollerns were still ont the throne?
If Otto von Hapsburg was sitting in the throne in Vienna, could the Anschluss
have taken place? The answer is obviously no because the Kaiser was a deeply
religious Christian. Otto von Hapsburg is an outstanding personage whose talents
have been wasted by the American demolition of "old" Europe. Of course
as Paul Preston pointed out by 1937, the cards were dealt and war was top priority
in many places including Spain. But it would be extraordinarily hypocritical
to fault Mussolini for the very same colonial methods used and approved by Winston
Churchill and the British government. Unfortunately, most historians have their
pets and participate in an effort to cement a politically correct view of the
world in place since 1945 and defended as dogma by today's political elite (including
the press). I can give Jon a good example: a few days ago, German TV aired a
documentary about the foreign ministry under Ribbentrop. Interviewed was among
others Baron von Weizsäcker, the former president of the Federal republic
and son of the Reich's ambassador to the Vatican. He said something that would
make most politicians and press people around the world cringe: "That Adolf
Hitler considered the 1938 Munich agreement as the greatest defeat in his career.
and this at one week before he shot himself." What happened to the "appeasement"
sell-out mentality? We always use the word "Munich" in connection
with the appeasement of dictators -- well, here was a dictator who strangely
didn't want to be appeased. Finally, I would never say that the Duce's government
was "Good government" after 1937 -- but Mussolini certainly saw the
dangers that Hitler posed to the Western world because if not, he would never
have asked the Vatican to excommunicate the Nazi leader. For me Mussolini had
no choice to ally himself with Hitler after the Anschluss. As De Gaulle so wisely
pointed out, geography is the determining factor is politics. For starters,
Jon should read My Rise and Fall, by Benito Mussolini".

RH: Presumably Hitler viewed Munich as a defeat, since his breaking the agreement
was the pretext for theWest's declaring war on him. Otherwise the Cliveden group,
which wanted to stay out of Europe and let Hitler attack the Soviet Union, might
have prevailed.

Adriana Pena writes: "I have a certain (rapidly dwindling) sympathy for Christopher
Jones' view in that we must try to view the beginnings of the Nazi and Fascist
somewhat forgetting the end, to recapture the reasons that people who could not
see into the future might have for supporting them. It is not to justify their
excesses to find it plausible that men of god will, based on the information available,
could have believed in them.

I call this the "Seventh Victim" syndrome. In the movie "The
Seventh Victim" there is a scene where the female protagonist is taking
a shower and a woman's shadow appears in the bath curtain. We see it, and we
jump out of our skin. Why? Because we have seen "Psycho" and we know
that the protagonist is going to get herself knifed. But no such thing happens.
The woman at the other side of the curtain merely tells her unpleasant news.
Then "Psycho" was filmed in the 60's and "The Seventh Victim"
in the 40's, thus we are judging the earlier movie on the later one. The movie
we see is not the same that the 40's audiences saw.

It is a fact that most of the plotters against Hitler were men who had, to
a certain extent believed in him. Carl Goerdeler, the soul of that rebellion
had been an early supporter, becoming disillusioned quite early with the new
regime, and became the nucleus of the permanent conspiracy. There was an extent
in which Hitler could appeal to what was best in men, or provide hope when there
was none. Men deceived themselves with him, true, but people deprived of hope
will believe strange things...

As for Mussolini, a description of Italy at the times of the Fascist takeover
leads to the belief that while the rise of Fascism itself was not inevitable,
what was inevitable was the arrival of an authoritarian regime of one sort or
another. Fascism, at least early on made possible for many things to get done,
by first providing order (things get done a lot faster when people are not exchanging
gunfire on a daily basis), and then by providing continuity (as opposed to the
situation that a goverment comes, starts something, is expelled, a new one comes
in who does not want to continue the previous government project, but start
its own, and so ad infinitum). It was not particulary bloodthirsty (It is to
be noted that the great classic that came out of the Fascist repression of its
adversaries was "Christ stopped at Eboli" of Carlo Levi). True, its
wars and colonial expansion were quite brutal, but then the great colonial empires
of the two great democracies, England and France, were also based on brutal
conquest. (Compared with the rule of Belgium in the Congo, the behavior of the
Italians in Ethiopia was angelical).

A more depressing thought is that the worst elements of Nazism (eugenics, institutional
racism, planned extermination of "subhumans" to acquire their territories),
came not from Fascism, but from the USA. It was in the USA that people were
forcibly sterilized by judicial decree in many states. The Nuremberg Laws were
inspired by the Jim Crow laws in the South. As for the extermination of inferior
races, what else was the Indian wars? As Theodore Roosevelt said 'a few savages
should not stand in the way of progress'."

RH: When I was in Germany in 1933 almost everyone placed great hope in Hitler,
just as when I came to the US in 1937 the Depression had led good people to
believe that Communism was the solution.